A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



In the same way the service of reaping was commuted for an annual penny 

 called rep-silver, the carrying service for a tax of zd. on each 30 acres called 

 ' aver-peni,' whilst the obligation for bringing cattle to the lord's fold was met 

 by a payment of a penny for every cow per year called ' sor-peni.' But as 

 Bury became a busy and populous town and the holdings changed hands, 

 were divided, or sublet, the assignment and collection of these dues became 

 increasingly difficult. In the uncertainty as to who was liable, it was easy 

 for the richer burgesses to evade payment, and the abbey official found 

 himself reduced to levying the tax on the poorer householders by dis- 

 training such of their movables as lay to his hand. This method of 

 collection led to disturbances and bad feeling in the town, and cannot have 

 yielded much profit to the abbey. When therefore the townspeople offered 

 to compound for rep-silver by the payment of a fixed sum every year, the 

 abbot, ' considering the undignified way in which the cellarer used to take 

 distresses in the houses of the poor, and how the old women came out with 

 their distaffs threatening and abusing the cellarer and his men, ordered that 

 20J-. should be given every year to the cellarer at the next portmanmoot 

 before August ' by the burgesses through the hands of the bailiff in discharge 

 of rep-silver. A quittance was also given for the payment of sor-peni in 

 consideration of 4/. payable at the same term, which was a pure gain to the 

 abbey as the burgesses had for some time successfully repelled the attempts 

 of the cellarer to seize the dunghills before their doors, and each householder 

 had acquired a prescriptive right to use or sell his own. 



There was indeed no practical object to be gained by enforcing agricul- 

 tural service on a body of townsmen, but the comparative ease with which 

 the men of Bury got rid of this element of villeinage was due to their 

 possessing an organization capable of bargaining with the abbot and of 

 standing to the bargain when made. The question was how far should this 

 new organization be allowed to carry its claims to an independent existence. 

 The rights of the town as a borough had been in some sort recognized by 

 previous abbots since the beginning of the 1 2th century, and more explicitly 

 by the charter of Abbot Anselm," but for the most part they were being 

 acquired by the steady encroachments of custom. From the monks' point of 

 view the burgess tenants in Bury were still to be distinguished from the 

 villeins of the abbey only by the few privileges mentioned in the charter, and 

 the new sources of revenue opened up by the growth of the town were 

 entirely at the disposal of their lord. They might be tallaged or their 

 merchandise taxed at his pleasure. The rents of their stalls and shops might 

 be made a rack-rent. Their numbers might be increased by the admission 

 of the abbey's suburban tenants to share all the advantages of the town's 

 trade without bearing any of its burdens. Their markets were to be regarded 

 as in the first place a source of supply to the abbey, which was to have the 

 right of first purchase at a lower price than others. And finally, their 

 municipal officers were to be considered as servants of the abbey." 



Such claims involved a complete negation of the rights which the free 

 towns of Western Europe were at this time winning for themselves, and the 

 men of Bury found it impossible to acquiesce in them. Their town was fast 



" Published by J. H. Round in American Hist. Rev. ii, 688. 

 " Mem. of St. Edmund's Abbey (Rolls Ser.), i, 279-80, 304. 

 636 



